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Sunday, January 30, 2011

"Resisting the Green Dragon" Is Now a Book!

Several months ago, the Cornwall Alliance released a DVD curriculum called Resisting the Green Dragon, which demonizes the environmental movement as supposedly anti-Christian. This month, the Cornwall Alliance has released a companion book for the DVD set entitled Resisting the Green Dragon: Dominion, Not Death. In the organization's January 19th newsletter (available at www[dot]cornwallalliance[dot]org/newsletter/issue/newsletter-january-19-2011/), the Cornwall Alliance describes the 309-page book, written by Dr. James A. Wanliss. Conservative Christian news site OneNewsNow posted an article on the book here.

Predictably, the book contains anti-environmentalism content that is similar to the DVD set, as evidenced from the chapter titles. One chapter, "The Church Complicit: How Environmentalism Has Penetrated the Church with Anti-Human and Anti-Christian Ideas," suggests that environmentalism is incompatible with Christian faith. Other chapter titles, such as "Created in the Image of God: Why Humans Are More Special to God than Other Creatures" and "Naked Ape: How Nature Is Not Divine, and Humans Are Spiritually Superior to All Other Creatures" presents an anthropocentric worldview that disdains animals as inferior creatures. Other chapters cast sustainability in a negative light and argue that environmentalism is supposedly detrimental to the poor.

One wonders if the author is familiar with Christian ecotheology and faith-based environmental initiatives, all of which demonstrate that Christianity and environmentalism can be compatible. Also, when the author claims that environmentalism is supposedly detrimental to the poor, one wonders if he is familiar with the environmental justice movement, which addresses the disproportionate ecological burdens (i.e., pollution) faced by poor communities and communities of color. I'm going to try to track down a copy of the book to read it for myself, but I am not optimistic about its content.

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The Cornwall Alliance's January 19th newsletter also comments on progressive commentators' disapproval of the DVD version of Resisting the Green Dragon, citing Right Wing Watch, Mother Jones, and the Huffington Post as examples. The newsletter complains that most of said commentators have relied on Right Wing Watch's version of the promotional video, rather than Cornwall Alliance's own 12-minute promo or the DVD curriculum itself. These voices, it claims, misrepresent Resisting the Green Dragon as promoting a humans-versus-nature worldview, when it actually wants to promote the idea that "human prosperity enables good environmental stewardship."

Below is a shorter promo for the DVD, which can give readers a sense of the curriculum's flavor. I invite readers to judge for themselves.